The company with the “Do No Evil” slogan is under heavy attack. A samping from a heated online conversation stream:



The Times calls the Chinese Google site a Communist Google which will block the

‘the three t’s and the two c’s’: references to Taiwanese or Tibetan independence, the Tiananmen massacre, cult-related searches, which may trigger reference to the banned Falun Gong organisation, and information about Communist party supremacy.

I saw reference to a A Castrated Google in China: From the China Digital Times.



Also doing the rounds are comparison studies of Google search results outside China and Inside it.



Rebecca MacKinnon has some useful suggestions for Google if it intends to go ahead with its initiative.

1. Make its “block list” public, and disclose the laws, regulations, and procedures that have required these specific words and URL’s to be blocked. We’re respecting Chinese law, right? So name the laws you’re respecting and how you’re respecting them.



2. Fight to prevent Google.com from being blocked, and if it does become completely blocked, consider discontinuing Google.cn.



3. If the Chinese government makes unreasonable requests for search result data, do the same thing you did to the U.S. Department of Justice: just say no. Othewise, you’ll be sending the message that you respect U.S. users much more than you respect Chinese users.



4. Establish clear procedures for your local China-based staff: if a government official calls your Beijing office demanding particular information be blocked or handed over, the request must adhere to strict company protocols and procedures...

Then, you have this outfit which claims to enable Internet users from inside China to break through the country’s Internet censorship to visit any public website in the free world.



Though China amounts for just about 2% of Google’s revenue and the company knows about the impending dominance of the Chinese Internet Market, we can choose to look at it. Maybe, Google’s compromising entry into China is Trojan Horse.



Agreed, you can’t access Falun Gong, but it also gives one-sixth (or thereabouts) of the world’s population, majority of which is tightly insulated and regulated, access to the best information from the compoany whose sole aijm is to be the organizer of the world’s information. We all seem to be benefitting from it. So, no harm is guessing why the Chinese can’t. It would be presumptious of us to think that the cause of Falun Gong, Tibet, Chinese Muslims and Democratic China among others will be buried. Remember, there was no Internet during the American War of Independence or the Indian struggle of independence.



Access to Google’s vast cache of information may be the Trojan horse the Chinese people need for a better future.